Star Of Wonder
by LastSaskatchewanSpacePirate
Summary: There have been late night Christmas Eve services at the church for as long as Peter Johnston has been preaching there, which has been almost twenty years now. And in all of that time he has seen the man in the red jacket attend only three. Christmas fic. Sherlock and Lestrade. Father-son relationship but can be read otherwise if you're so inclined. T just in case. Pre-John.


**Twice Lestrade went to church on Christmas Eve as an adult, and one time he went as a father**. I posted this on my dA account ages ago, and figured I'd spread the love here. The first of (hopefully) many Christmas fics! Happy December first, everyone. Thanks for reading.

* * *

There have been late night Christmas Eve services at the church for as long as Peter Johnston has been preaching there, which has been almost twenty years now. And in all of that time he has seen the man in the red jacket attend only three.

This man attends church only on Christmas eve, and then only at the late night service, the one that begins at eleven o' clock. He does not come every year. There is no pattern, no rhythm to his attendance. Some years he is there. Some years he is not.

On Christmas Eve, at the last service of the night, the congregation lights white candles to hold in their hands while singing hymns. The church will be dim, lit by flickering candlelight, and the snow will drift softly past the windows. There is always many people in attendance, some members of the church, some out of town guests, some passing strangers. They come together and they sing, and no one opens the hymn books because everyone knows the words.

These are Peter Johnston's favourite services.

The families with young children come to one of the earlier Christmas eve services, but ever eager to stay up late, Peter's son begs to come and Peter permits it. Daniel is five years old the year that Peter sees the man for the first time. Daniel at five is called Danny by everyone who knows him and wishes to be an astronaut when he grows up and likes it when his father picks him up and puts him on his shoulders. He sits in the front pew during the service, swinging his feet. He is too young to be trusted with a candle. When the service ends Danny is out the door like a shot, shrieking and laughing in the night air, chasing snowflakes. He slips on the ice in the parking lot and falls, hitting his chin on the unforgiving pavement. Before Peter can intercept, a man he does not know has gently helped his child to his feet, wiped the tears from Danny's cheeks, and said some comforting words to him.

He catches a glimpse of the stranger as Danny comes rushing to him, eager to show off the scrapes on his hands and chin. The man passes under a streetlight as he walks away, and Peter sees him turn and look back. Handsome bloke. Brown hair. A bit younger than Peter himself - early thirties, perhaps? Red jacket. Peter recognizes the jacket at once, if not the face. With the abundance of people who had turned up for the late service, the congregation had been pressed in tight together. Red jacket had been just a bit to his right. Peter remembers him because he had had a beautiful singing voice:the only one in the room, Peter included, who had been able to hit and to hold the high note of _O Holy Night_without breaking.

Red jacket looks young, and he walks with confidence, but there had been something in his gaze as he had looked backward over his shoulder that had been deeply and terribly sad. Peter wants to say something, thank you for helping my son, maybe, but the man with the red jacket gets in his car and guns the engine and drives away.

Peter Johnston will not see him again for many years.

Daniel (or Dan, as he prefers now to be called) is fifteen when Peter finally sees the man a second time. Dan is sulky and irritable and constantly going through what Peter's wife describes over the phone from her new home with her new husband as _another phase_. He has no interest in being an astronaut, nor completing his schoolwork on time, nor attempting to maintain a positive relationship with his father at all. It is Christmas eve and they are holding candles and halfway through _O Little Town Of Bethlehem_, Peter at the front and Dan in the pew furthest back.

Dan is in the pew farthest back because the pastor's son does not wish to sit near the front, nor near his father. Dan wants to be at his mother's house with his friends, not here to sing the songs that he grew up singing on Christmas Eve by candlelight. Peter is old now, with gray hair and back problems and the lines of age all over his face. He is trying to catch his son's eye, wishing for a time when Dan was Danny and Dan did not sulk and he was not old and Christmas eve was a time fraught with magic and excitement and joy.

This is when his eye falls on the man in the red jacket.

He is a few seats over from Dan. He looks much older, greying around the temples and his handsome face lined with age. The lips are curved in a slight smile, but the man's eyes are sad. There is something dark underneath. Something old and very very lonely. The red jacket is worn out now, but otherwise the same. If Peter listens closely, he fancies he can hear the warm mellow voice which does not break on the high note of _O Holy Night_.

But there are a hundred voices in the room and this is just a fancy, and when it occurs to Peter to look for the man again he is gone.

The man does not appear the year after, nor the year after that, not the year after that one, or even the next.

But one year after that, when Dan is called Daniel again at twenty years old and has gone to visit his mother and his stepfather for Christmas, Peter sees the red jacket once more. It is Christmas eve, and the church is lit by candlelight. The windowpanes are patterned with frost and ice, fluffy snow floating outside on the midnight air. They are singing _We Three Kings_when Peter happens to look up from his book to catch a glimpse of the worn red jacket.

But it is not the mystery man wearing it, the one who picks up and comforts injured six year olds, and who's eyes are sad with a pain he does not show. The red jacket is zipped tightly around the small bony frame of a very young man. Peter would put him at late twenties, though he looks younger even than his own son at first glance.

This young man has filthy straggly black curls and a pale face with prominent cheekbones. He is the only one in the room holding a hymn book, though he does not sing. His fingers are brittle looking, all bone and no flesh. There is something about him that screams homeless. Peter is used to homeless people in the church, especially at Christmas. He does not mind. Everyone is welcome to worship God with his congregation, whether they have a place to call home or not.

He does wonder, however, where he got the jacket.

But then his eye falls on the man beside the homeless boy, a man who's brown hair is almost entirely obscured by grey and who is well past his early thirties and who does not wear a red jacket. But the strength in the mellow voice is the same, and the face is the same, and Peter knows that this is his mystery man.

The brown eyes do not seem sad this year. He wonders why.

It is past midnight, into the morning of Christmas day. The hundred candles that light the room will flicker or waver but they do not go out. The hundred voices soar and blend together. _O Holy Night_comes around, and Peter watches the two men, one of whom wears a red jacket. They stand as though father and son, though they look nothing alike. There are hundreds of men and women and children in his church, who return year after year to this very service. He wonders why these two have so captured his attention. He wonders who they are, and finds he does not need to know.

_Silent Night_is the last song, and he watches the pair of them through a room of a hundred candles burning. The magic of Christmas eve is thick and bright in the air. The man who had helped up Peter's son in the church parking lot puts his arm around the scrawny boy in the red jacket and pulls him closer.

The boy in the jacket looks up from his book for the last verse. The light from his neighbor's candle catches in his eyes and Peter is reminded of the look on Daniel's face on these Christmas eves all those years ago. It is a look of wonder. A look of hope, and of peace.

The man who's hair is greying looks down at the boy and smiles, and his eyes are not sad like they used to be, they are full of something like joy.

Something like love.

But maybe that is just the candlelight.

They are gone from the room when Peter decides to look for them, and he does not see either ever again and he knows in his heart that he had not expected to. He goes home that evening and calls his son. He continues to hold the candlelight services until his retirement, but there are no more red jackets in the congregation.

There have been late night Christmas eve services at the church for as long as Peter Johnston has been preaching there. And in all of that time he has seen the man in the red jacket attend only three.

But maybe that was all that he needed.


End file.
